Assessment of genetic diversity in quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) genotypes using microsatellite markers

To evaluate the genetic diversity in quinoa genotypes for future studies, 60 imported quinoa genotypes were studied using microsatellite markers (SSR) at the faculty of agricultural sciences, University of Guilan, Rasht, Iran, in 2022. The results of the phenotypic evaluation of the quinoa genotypes showed that there was a relatively high diversity among them. Among the studied traits, seed yield plant-1 (42.8) and days to seed dough stage (8.14) had the highest and lowest phenotypic coefficient of variation, respectively. Evaluating the molecular diversity of genotypes using 40 microsatellite markers produced 136 polymorphic bands, and the average number of effective alleles (1.81), polymorphic information content (0.60), Shannon's index (0.54) and Nei’s genetic diversity (0.44), confirmed the existence of high diversity among the quinoa genotypes. The markers KAAT027, KAAT036, KAAT040, KCAA014, KGA042, KGA055 and KGA059 with five polymorphic alleles had the highest number of polymorphic alleles among the used markers in this experiment. The average number of effective alleles of microsatellite markers in the studied quinoa genotypes was 1.81 alleles, and markers KAAT027 and KAAT006 with 3.75 and 1.08 alleles showed the highest and lowest number of alleles, respectively. Cluster analysis using UPGMA method grouped 60 quinoa genotypes into two subpopulations with 38 and 22 genotypes. Since one of the important criteria to choose suitable and useful markers is the number of effective alleles, therefore, markers with more effective alleles such as KAAT027, KAAT036 and KAAT040 (all with more than three effective alleles) can be used to investigate the genetic diversity of quinoa genotypes in the future researches.